'In photography, you don’t get to have it all. You are always making choices, always making sacrifices.

'To capture the light.

'Tom’s longest-standing commitment is his run-down house Mayfield, which hasn’t been the same since Adeline. He’s stuck in the past drowning his sorrows in too many bottles of wine and an unfulfilling photography business. Unable to move on Tom is treading water in a low-commitment relationship. The only problem ― she isn’t Adeline.

'Lottie is living with her baby, Coral, in a cramped flat above a fish and chip shop. Struggling to make ends meet, all she wants is to find connection ― with her distant mother, the parent’s group, her old school friends, but Lottie straddles too many different worlds to quite fit into any of them. She doesn’t have much, but at least her and Coral have each other.

'Told through alternating perspectives, Kirsty Iltners’ debut novel examines the lives of two isolated individuals to reveal the fragility of life and the fallibility of our memories. Winner of the 2023 Dorothy Hewett Award, Depth of Field is a gripping novel in which the mechanisms of photography are allowed to falter just enough to expose how selective and unreliable our memories are, especially when parts of the truth are left out of the frame.' (Publication summary)

'Spirals is the third and final volume of John Kinsella's collected poems and dates from 2014-2023, seeing Kinsella through his fifties and without an end in sight. Spirals is not a case of a poet growing older, steadier, and more sedate but rather brings an ongoing sense of development that is also recursive and spatial. Politically, institutionally, and attitudinally, Kinsella remains an outsider.

'John Kinsella's poetry is collected in one place for the very first time and includes poems that have appeared in chapbooks, publications outside of Australia, and some that are no longer in print. In this final volume, the spiralling effects of time combined with Kinsella's probing and connections in space have brought his poetry an authority and a sense of being listened to not only with awe but with respect. And still, Kinsella renounces any inflated self. Instead of basting in a perversely satisfying white guilt, or retreating to a passive melancholy, Kinsella is active, dynamic, and even exuberant. His poetry is replete with astounding energy that is creative and forward-looking while remaining concerned about environmental damage, exploitations of neoliberalism and militarism, and the continuing illegitimacies of unacknowledged settler occupation. Kinsella's final volume marks the culmination. (Publication summary)

'War takes our names from us and turns us into numbers.

'The number displaced. The number imprisoned. The number tortured. The number dead.

'The country has been swarmed by the Invader and his army, the Pack. The city is under siege. Many have fled, while others have stayed to defend their country. Many more have died.

'Teller's family has been brutally murdered by the Pack. Only she and Daughter remain. They leave their city behind and seek refuge in a resistance cell. Here they gather with other survivors who are determined to overthrow the Invader. But will they ever be strong enough to claim back their city? Their country? Their lives?

'A journey through love, grief and, ultimately, hope. Amanda Creely's profound allegorical tale sheds light on shared human experiences of war and remembers the nameless victims. Shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award, Nameless explores love in all its forms and the importance of storytelling in its capacity to both teach and heal.' (Publication summary)

'A man treads water in the Swan River, hoping to bring his friend back to shore. Three siblings gaze skyward seeking a comet among the stars. A mother and daughter grapple with their fraught relationship and an inappropriate birthday cake. Bushfires sweep a Perth suburb while a woman, still burnt from a previous relationship, lessens the divide between an individual and their community.

'In Greater City Shadows, Laurie Steed shines a light on the tremendous complexity and beauty of everyday relationships. From unrequited first love and burnt flames of the past to early parenthood stresses and tense friendships. These short stories are vulnerable and tender ― a captivating collection reminding us that to be connected is to be human.' (Publication summary)

'Jono, a city-born Indigenous teenager is trying to figure out who he really is. Life in Brisbane hasn't exactly made him feel connected to his Country or community. Luckily, he's got his best friend, Jenny, who has been by his side through their hectic days at St Lucia Private.

'After graduating, Jono and Jenny score gigs at the Aboriginal Performing Arts Centre and an incredible opportunity comes knocking - interning with a documentary crew. Their mission? To promote a big government mining project in the wild western Queensland desert. The catch? The details are sketchy, and the land is rumoured to be sacred. But who cares? Jono is stoked just to be part of something meaningful. Plus, he gets to be the lead presenter!

'Life takes a turn when they land in Gambari, a tiny rural town far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Suddenly, Jono's intuition becomes his best guide. He's haunted by an eerie omen of death, battling suffocating panic attacks, and even experiencing visions of Wudun - a malevolent spirit from the Dreaming. What's the real story behind the gas mining venture? Are the documentary crew hiding something from Jono? And could Wudun be a messenger from the land, fighting back against the invasion?

'Borderland is a heart-pounding horror gothic that follows Jono on an epic quest to find himself in the face of unbelievable challenges. Graham Akhurst, the brilliant mind behind this coming-of-age gem, is a Fulbright scholar from the Kokomini of Northern Queensland. Brace yourself for a fresh, mind-bending tale exploring Indigenous identity, the impact of colonization, and what happens when you take a stand.' (Publication summary)

'A Lady’s Pen provides the first complete and original transcripts of the surviving botanical letters of Georgiana Molloy, the first woman in Western Australia to become an internationally successful collector.

'In December 1839, Georgiana Molloy received an unexpected letter from Captain James Mangles in London asking her to collect specimens of native plants in the British settlement where she lived, on Wadandi Pibelmen country in Western Australia’s southwest. During the last six years of her life, they exchanged letters and Molloy sent Captain Mangles three exquisite collections of seeds and dried wildflowers from Taalinup and Undalup (Augusta and Busselton. Eminent gardeners and botanists considered Molloy’s specimens to be of the highest quality they had received from the ‘Swan River colony’ and the surviving specimens are still studied in herbariums around the world, today. In 1843, Georgiana Molloy died having received no payment or formal recognition for her scientific achievements.

'Bernice Barry’s A Lady’s Pen: The botanical letters of Georgiana Molloy presents the original extracts that Captain James Mangles preserved of her letters, and are considered the only significant, first-hand source of information about Georgiana Molloy’s botanical work. The historical filters within the letters are demystified and an account of Mangles’ own life helps to restore the voice missing from that long-distance conversation for 180 years.' (Publication summary)

'Elora is leaving her hometown for university. Leaving behind friends, family, and safety to follow her dream of studying theatre while she still has the chance.

'Together, Elora and her older sister, Vivienne, set out by road for the city and the upcoming semester. The relationship between them is fractured and fading, turned upside down by Eta Draconis: the violent meteor shower that has rained across Earth since the beginning of their adolescence. In a land scarred by craters and shockwaves, to travel anywhere is to risk everything. As the showering intensifies and their way forward becomes threatened, the sisters are forced to confront their relationship and recalibrate their hopes for the future. Do they return home or press on in the face of the meteors? Can life ever be normal with the world crashing down all around you?

'Eta Draconis is an epic story about two resilient sisters who are determined to live their life in a world on the brink of destruction.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Harsh Hakea is John Kinsella’s second volume of collected works dating from 2005 to 2014 capturing a career in media res. It includes poems from widely read volumes like Jam Tree Gully, which won the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, and ones from lesser-known volumes like Love Sonnets, which was published by the British small press, Equipage.

'For the first time, John Kinsella’s poetry is collected in one place, including poems that have appeared in chapbooks, publications outside of Australia, and those which are no longer in print. In this volume, Kinsella’s poetry exemplifies a heightened awareness of the specificity of place, but also of the perspective of being within it or removed from it, as a guest living on stolen Aboriginal land. Kinsella’s poems often begin with the personal and broaden out in their reach. Reading this second volume of the Collected forces the reader to consider questions that have no convenient answer, that remain pressing still today; questions about self-destruction, masculinity, environmentalism, mortality, violence, and protest. This is a volume that is deeply moving at times, unsettling at others, sometimes both – a landmark addition to Australian literature.' (Publication summary)

'Kia Kia, Noogiting Wirren, Minang Yorga, Minang Boodja

We acknowledge the sleeping spirit, the Minang woman, from Minang country

Bessie Flowers was Minang Noongar woman born in 1851 in King Georges Sound, Albany. She lived at Annesfield mission until she was 16 but spent most of her adult life in Victoria. She is remembered for her gifts as a pianist and singer, for her dedication to teaching, and as a strong Noongar woman who fought to keep Aboriginal families together.'  (Publication summary)

 (Publication summary)

'Funny, clever and keenly observed, Decadence is a profound musing on literature and language, that deftly skewers the would-be gatekeepers of verse. With this second collection, Thuy On has cemented herself as a vibrant, unique and captivating new voice in Australian poetry.

MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE

'In Decadence, Thuy On indulges in her love of language, assembling a unique erotics of word and punctuation, showcasing a poetry that is pure—in being about itself—but also powerfully seductive. As the poet herself puts it, this is ‘art laid bare’, performing how language works as language but also as a window onto those dark, human mysteries of being and feeling. Indeed, if On builds such a brilliantly decadent mansion out of poetry, exploiting striking imagery and playful wit, it is ultimately to provide a kind of refuge, ‘lest the cave of night swallows you.’

MARIA TAKOLANDER

'Thuy On's poems are always wry, epicurean and defiant, and this book underlines her unique place in Australian poetry. Literate yet disarmingly unpretentious, wildly playful yet leavened with complex feeling, Decadence is a surreptitious delight.

ANDY JACKSON' (Publication summary)

Entrepreneur, aviator, publisher, publicist, propagandist, playwright, songwriter, motorist, land developer, dreamer: for five brief years it seemed like there was nothing Clement John DeGaris couldn’t do. He’d talk you into investing your life savings with a promise of doubling them in a year and then, when he lost them, he’d talk you into giving him more. He was dashing, patriotic, handsome, fearless and funny: men and women adored him. He’d put a ‘second storey’ on Mildura with his marketing skills and tenacious work in the fruit, irrigation and land industries; he was going to build a new home afresh at Kendenup, Western Australia. Along the way, he wrote and sold books and plays, songs, suburbs and a host of other equally remarkable schemes. There seemed to be little that C. J. DeGaris couldn’t achieve: he was a new kind of Australian man, modern, quickwitted, unflappable.

David Nichols tells the story of this extraordinary comet in the Australian sky of a century ago with a vigour, humour and empathy appropriate to DeGaris himself. The tragedy that the man brings upon himself and his family, and the cruelty of fate, make a universal story as well as an unexplored piece of Australian history that stretches from the birth of Mildura, through to the South Australian settlement of Pyap, to the exciting creation of a new kind of ‘colony’ at Kendenup, and Melbourne’s roaring twenties.  (Publication summary)

'Akita's family have always kept moving to survive. Sudan to Cairo. Cairo to Sydney. Sydney to Geelong. At each new place, challenges test and break Akita, her four siblings and her parents. Just when eight-year-old Akita is feeling settled at her new school and community in Sydney for the first time in her life, her parents decide to relocate to Geelong to be closer to their Sudanese relatives. The move is the beginning of a downward spiral that threatens to unravel the fabric of their family and any hope for finding peace and belonging.

'Told through the interchanging perspectives of Akita and her mother, Taresai, this coming of age story shines a light on the generational curses of trauma, and gives voice to the silent heartache of searching for acceptance in an adopted society which isn't able to look past the surface of skin colour. Individually, the female narrators experience racism, rejection and despair, but together their narratives reveal a resilience of spirit and determination to transcend expectations of what a daughter, a sister, and a mother can be.

'Hopeless Kingdom is the winner of the 2020 Dorothy Hewett Award. Inspired by the author's own experience of migration from Africa to Australia, this story signals a powerful new voice in Australian writing.'  (Publication summary)

'This is the first volume of a three-volume Collected Poems by John Kinsella that dates back to when he was seventeen, and moves on through forty-one-plus years of writing and memorising poetry. Collected in one place for the first time are poems that have appeared in chapbooks or other publications outside Australia, or that are out of print. Kinsella’s major poetic concerns have been how to write place without claiming place (he acknowledges he lives on stolen Aboriginal land), how to write of being part of many place-experiences at once, and how to write the biosphere with ecological and humanitarian justice in mind. Further, his poems consider how we might be regionally communal and internationally responsive at once, without ever succumbing to economic globalism: a mode of living he refers to as ‘international regionalism’. Always attuned to the natural world, his activist poetry examines how humans respond to a world that they themselves have placed under pressure. But his concerns are many, and literature, art and music are ever-present in a poetry that affirms the creative as a potential force for positive change. His embracing of many different poetic forms, along with a merging of the 'lyrical' and 'experimental', seeks to reinforce that diversity is to be celebrated. These volumes of poetry are a landmark addition to Australian literature.' (Publication summary)

'Garreth Hoyle is a true crime writer whose destructive love affair with hallucinogenic drugs has sent him searching for ghosts in the unforgiving mallee desert of Western Australia. Heading north through Kalgoorlie, he attempts to score off old friends from his shearing days on Banjawarn Station. His journey takes an unexpected detour when he discovers an abandoned ten-year-old girl and decides to return her to her estranged father in Leonora, instead of alerting authorities. Together they begin the road trip from hell through the scorched heart of the state’s northern goldfields.

'Love, friendship and hope are often found in the strangest places, but forgiveness is never simple, and the past lies buried just beneath the blood red topsoil. The only question is whether Hoyle should uncover it, or run as fast as his legs can take him.

'Banjawarn is an unsettling debut from Josh Kemp. Echoing Cormac McCarthy’s haunting border trilogy and narrative vernacular that recalls the sparse lyricism of Randolph Stow and Tim Winton, this is a darkly funny novel that earns its place amongst the stable of Australian gothic literature.' (Publication summary)

'Antigone Kefala is one of the most significant of the Australian writers who have come from elsewhere; it would be difficult to overstate the significance of her life and work in the culture of this nation. Over the last half-century, her poetry and prose have reshaped and expanded Australian literature and prompted us to re-examine its premises and capacities. From the force of her poetic imagery and the cadences of her phrases and her sentences to the large philosophical and historical questions she poses and to which she responds, Kefala has generated in her writing new ways of living in time, place and language. Across six collections of poetry and five prose works, themselves comprising fiction, non-fiction, essays and diaries, she has mapped the experience of exile and alienation alongside the creativity of a relentless reconstitution of self. Kefala is also a cultural visionary. From her rapturous account of Sydney as the place of her arrival in 1959, to her role in developing diverse writing cultures at the Australia Council, to the account of her own writing life amongst a community of friends and artists in Sydney Journals (2008), she has reimagined the ways we live and write in Australia.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'A startlingly frank take on modern femininity, Michele Seminara’s Suburban Fantasy combines finely crafted narratives with lyrical artistry and sure-footed eloquence. This is raw, fiery, firebrand feminist writing that manages to artfully co-exist with giddying intimacy and poignant soul-bearing.'

Source : publication summary

'Between 2012 and 2019 Elizabeth Marrkilyi Ellis, Inge Kral and Jennifer Green worked together to make an enduring record of endangered verbal arts in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands communities of Western Australia. They filmed traditional Ngaanyatjarra tjinytjatjunku or mirlpa (telling stories while drawing in the sand) with women and girls. They then loaded up some iPads with a drawing app and filmed younger women using this new technology to draw with as they told stories about everyday life in their desert communities.

'The sixteen iPad stories are presented in i-Tjuma: Ngaanyatjarra stories from the Western Desert of Central Australia and readers can view the films with a linked QR codes. The stories burst with colour and originality, blending tradition and innovation and providing a unique window on the storytelling arts of an ancient culture.

'Story writers: Joella Butler; Katrina Giles; Bethany Cooke; Claudine Butler; Phillipa Butler; Kresna Cameron; Delisha Reid; Donisha Yunkett; Trisha Lewis; Susan Reid'(Publication summary) 

 'It is important for us to read our own stories and to keep the tradition of our language for our future generations.' — Dereck Harris, Chairman, Ngaanyatjarra Council

'In the Time of their Lives is a wonderful book that honours the extraordinary heritage and historical trajectory of Western Desert (Ngaanyatjarra) speech, the importance of speech and the management of its varieties with a complexity and insight we have rarely seen in print. With a blend of interviews in translation, close examples of speech, first person testimony, photographs, film clips and historical material, Kral and Ellis have brought attention to the changing sensory world of Yarnangu, of sight sound and bodily experience as central to Ngaanyatjarra sociality and personhood. It is rare, indeed, to have such respectful research flow from the intimate and personal perspective of a committed member and active participant in Ngaanyatjarra life.' — Fred Myers, Silver Professor of Anthropology, New York University. (Publication summary)